Effective Aid Ukraine, an Irish charity helping the Ukrainian community, is combining farming, cooking, and residential care reform to give young people of Lviv, Ukraine practical skills, confidence, and choice.
The project is based at Rozdil Friends Home, a residential center for boys and young men with disabilities. Residents displaced from eastern Ukraine after Russia’s invasion grow vegetables in a greenhouse, harvest fresh produce throughout the year, and learn how to cook and preserve food for future meals.
“It’s not just about teaching children how to grow food,” Tom McEnaney, Founder of Effective Aid Ukraine, tells Food Tank. “It’s choosing what you’re going to eat and being able to make it yourself,” he says. “That’s what leads to people having more fulfilled lives.”
Growing food also helps stretch the limited budgets of the nonprofit. Vegetables produced on-site reduce food purchases, leaving more money for clothing, repairs, and other daily needs.
Effective Aid Ukraine is now working to rebuild the center’s kitchen. When it is finished, residents will help prepare meals while kitchen staff become teachers instead of cooks. They will learn food safety, meal planning, and cooking skills they can use later in life as a career and to live independently.
The organization hopes their work will serve as a pilot to support a broader shift taking place across Ukraine. McEnaney sees the country moving toward community-based care. Working with the Lviv Regional Authority and its governor, Maksym Kozitzkyy, Effective Aid Ukraine is helping test how food production in residential care facilities can be scaled up and out.
Four years after Russia’s invasion of the country, more than 10 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in Ukraine and 3.8 million are internally displaced, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Effective Aid Ukraine sees rebuilding daily routines and pathways toward greater independence as an important part of the country’s broader recovery.
The UNHCR leverages food and cooking as catalysts for recovery across emergency settings and during times of conflict. The World Food Programme, along with UNHCR, call for decisive actions to ensure access to safe and sufficient nutritious food in times of crisis. Initiatives like the one in Rozdil build on those findings by connecting agriculture with everyday independence.
McEnaney believes the lesson of their work is simple: “It’s about giving people purpose, dignity, and fulfillment.”
Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.
Photo courtesy of Effective Aid Ukraine
